Are New Jersey’s schools the nation’s best? According to statistics released last week by the national "Diplomas Count" project, the state has the best high school graduation rate, including for minorities. Previously, the College Board reported New Jersey has the highest average Advanced Placement scores. It consistently ranks near the top in the National Assessment of Educational Progress. And it follows only Connecticut and Massachusetts in the "Education Week" comprehensive rankings of schools published earlier this year.

But, wait — how could that be? Gov. Chris Christie called New Jersey a "failed system" where children are "trapped in failing schools" and teachers are a greedy lot whose incompetence is protected by tenure laws and union "thugs"?

The same state? Which characterization is true?

Obviously, the version most supported by facts. But facts spoil a good narrative. Right now, says Sharon Krengel of the Education Law Center, a "negative narrative" meets the political needs of a Republican governor and his Democratic allies in the Legislature who push privatization and "tenure reform." An ideology of cheap schools, weak unions and choice.

In a different context, billionaire George Soros recently said this about facts and politics: "Facts do not provide any protection." No protection for the truth.

Forget rational argument, he wrote in The New York Review of Books. In ideology-driven politics, facts are used to manipulate, not enlighten. "In difficult times, unscrupulous manipulators enjoy a competitive advantage over those who seek to confront reality."

"If you look at all the facts, you can see things are getting better, even in urban schools," says Marion Bolden, the former Newark schools chief. "Change doesn’t happen overnight."

But facts don’t count when blaming feels so right politically. Teachers are easy targets of the envious who lost jobs, benefits and pensions and aren’t rich enough for tax reductions. Urban schools are demonized because — surprise — they spend more than suburban schools where race and privilege are, as the credit card ad goes, the "priceless," but uncounted, costs of success.

No one dare argue this state is no longer willing to provide its children with anything but cheap schooling. The argument is made instead that cutting funds, outsourcing to profit-making and politically-connected entrepreneurs, eliminating the benefits of teachers, and disparaging classroom experience not only will reduce costs but also will improve results.

But the governor says there’s no link between cash and good education. Christie recently told an audience at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, "Money is not the answer to the problem. New Jersey is the laboratory that proves the failure of that experiment."

Here’s another fact this newspaper’s fact-checking feature said was "mostly true" — only 17 tenured teachers were fired for incompetence in the last decade. Christie used it to defend the elimination of tenure. The fact of 17 dismissals after trials might be true, but the question is wrong. The right question is: How many teachers leave for any reason? Maybe counseled out. Threatened with embarrassing charges. Figured the job was too tough. The answer — 50 percent in the first five years, up to 75 percent in some states.

It’s like characterizing the crime problem by counting only criminal cases that actually go to a verdict when it’s known more than 90 percent of charges are resolved through plea bargains. Most teacher problems also are resolved informally, without trials, inexpensively.

Christie’s spokesman, Michael Drewniak, says a comparison between plea bargains and tenure trials is "ridiculous." He says the state lacks a "uniform manner of evaluating" teachers. He also says the governor believes "the vast majority of teachers are doing great work," but blames unions for protecting "bad ones."

And what about the children "trapped in failing schools?" The facts about privatized choices — like charters — show the neediest kids remain behind in "failing" schools while most charters skim the most likely to succeed. Even so, charters and traditional schools achieve about the same outcomes.

And who exactly "trapped" children in those schools? Teachers? Unions? The unpleasant fact is the vast majority of poor, minority children are consigned to urban schools because the state failed to desegregate and then failed to fund and operate them properly.

Fact one: The state is responsible — it’s had direct, operating control over the three largest systems for 15 years. If they failed, the state failed. States are run by governors and legislators.